


finals

by TransparentSheepDeer



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Canon: Devilman Crybaby, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff without Plot, Friendship, Fudo Akira POV, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Pre-Amon Akira, Sleep Deprivation, Study Group, ryo 'i dont need sleep' asuka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TransparentSheepDeer/pseuds/TransparentSheepDeer
Summary: Ryo spends the weekend before finals at the Makimuras' place. Good thing he does, because otherwise he probably would have forgotten to go to sleep. Thankfully, Akira is there to cuddle him into a slumber.
Relationships: Asuka Ryo & Fudo Akira & Makimura Miki, Asuka Ryo | Satan/Fudo Akira
Comments: 4
Kudos: 162





	finals

Once again, it was that time of the year when Akira had to convince Ryo to get some sleep.

Fortunately, he had the best strategy, and Ryo wasn’t even aware of it. Well, probably because by the time Akira found it necessary to intervene, Ryo was already only half-alive.

Akira saw his boyfriend sitting on the Makimuras’ couch. Dozens of papers, notebooks and textbooks were spread across the room. The coffee table crunched under the weight of Ryo’s things, along with several empty coffee mugs and bowls.

Ryo was at the phase where he was mumbling to himself, narrowing and widening his eyes constantly in a useless attempt to read.

Akira approached him slowly, quietly. Ryo’s eyes would be probably red by now, and his ability to notice things moving around him was probably shut down at this point.

Regardless, when he entered Ryo’s line of eyesight, his boyfriend gasped and flinched. “Ah!”

His head whirled around for a few seconds, then finally settled on Akira’s face. “You… scared me.”

Akira smiled at him. “I know. Sorry.”

Ryo frowned at him, but it was obvious that he couldn’t really make sense of what just happened. He turned back to the paper in his hand and tried to continue.

Ryo had a knack for not sitting at the far end of couches, so Akira sat in the thin spot between Ryo and the couch’s arm.

“Noooooo…” was all Ryo said when Akira wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him back.

“Shh,” Akira shushed, burying his face in Ryo’s neck. His shoulders were really tense. “I’m just sitting here. I’m not doing anything.”

Ryo made an ungrateful whining noise. “Study. I have to study… Akira. If you… you… if… uh, you pulling me back, I… I can’t… I mean, the notes, I… the notes are so far away now.”

Akira kissed his ear. Ryo didn’t really react. “You have one in your hand.”

Ryo raised said hand and stared at the paper. “…I do.”

“Study from that one,” Akira offered, “then I’ll let you get the next one. Come on, lean back.”

Ryo probably would have protested, but Akira knew that his brain refused to interpret any spoken word. So when Akira pulled him back, Ryo let him. A second later, he wiggled to find a better position, and then, he let out a sigh, and Akira felt the tension leaving his shoulders.

He grinned into Ryo’s neck, leaving butterfly kisses on his skin.

Ryo sighed through his nose. The hand that held his paper dropped it carelessly to the ground. “I know what you’re doing,” he mumbled.

Akira had a hard time keeping his voice innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re just trying to get me to sleep.”

“…well, is it working?”

Ryo hummed. “Yeah. Kinda.”

Akira kissed his neck one last time, then he leaned back. He grabbed Ryo’s hand that had been holding the paper, intertwining their fingers. The other hand reached for the blanket on the couch’s arm behind him.

When he wrapped it around Ryo and himself, Ryo groaned. “I don’t want to sleep.”

“You’ll have to.”

Ryo sighed again, loudly, slowly. He was starting to fall asleep. Mission completed. “If I don’t study, I’ll fail.”

“The exam is in two days,” Akira chided, “and this isn’t your first degree. And you’re still in your first semester. It’s not _that_ hard, Ryo. You’re allowed to rest.”

Ryo groaned again. He sat up, and Akira thought he was going to have to yank him back and hold him in a wrestling hold for long enough to make him fall asleep. But then Ryo just turned around, and fell back onto him, stomach to stomach.

“Oof,” Akira grunted when Ryo landed.

Ryo mumbled something that sounded like “…ry”, and buried his face in Akira’s neck.

Akira adjusted the blanket. Ryo’s breath tickled his neck. “You haven’t brushed your teeth in two days, have you?”

“Mm. I can’t move anymore,” Ryo mumbled.

“I know,” Akira muttered back. He paused. “You know, you don’t have to stay up for…” He did the math. “…36 hours to study. You can take breaks. You can sleep.”

Ryo shook his head. “This is efficient,” he slurred.

“It’s literally not.” Akira started stroking his hair, hoping he would fall asleep easier. “I saw that it took you an hour to grade a paper.”

“It was hard.”

“It was a multiple-choice exam. Multiple-choice exams are literally the easiest to correct, you walnut.”

Ryo mumbled half a sentence into his neck. Akira knew what that meant.

He continued stroking his hair and waited for him to fall asleep.

\--

Akira ended up falling asleep on the couch too, as Ryo couldn’t be moved in any way after that.

Ryo was still snoring when Akira was already wide awake.

He turned his head and spotted the clock. It was six AM.

He heard someone come down the stairs.

The person approached the couch. It was Taro.

He frowned at Akira, eyes looking him and Ryo up and down. “Can I watch TV?” he asked, loudly.

Akira put his finger in front of his mouth and shook his head. “It’s six AM, you’ll wake everyone.”

Taro’s lips turned upside down. “No, I won’t,” he said, quietly, “You never notice when I do. I do it a lot.”

Akira put his hand on Ryo’s back. “Ryo needs his sleep.”

Taro shrugged. “Sure.”

He sat on the armchair next to them, put in his earbuds and stared at his phone.

The rest of the family woke too. Miki gave Akira his phone so he could occupy himself while Ryo slept.

His boyfriend woke up at eleven AM. “Mm.”

He tried to go back to sleep, but Akira’s ribs hurt from supporting his weight. “Babe, I really need to get up.”

Ryo climbed off him. Akira followed, taking a deep breath for the first time in hours. His ribs cracked when he stretched.

Ryo rubbed his face. There were bags under his eyes, his hair stood in all directions.

Akira reached out to smooth it down a bit. Ryo sat closer to him and leaned his head on Akira. Akira put his arm around Ryo’s shoulder and stroked his arm.

“Do you feel better?”

Ryo groaned.

Akira kissed his temple. “Are you finished with grading your exams?”

“No,” Ryo muttered, “there’s still a few dozen left.”

“I can help you, if you want to.”

Ryo raised his head and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”

Akira patted his arm. “You should probably take a bath.”

Ryo laughed. “Okay, fine, point taken.”

\--

After Ryo disappeared, Miki sat next to Akira. “It’s kind of insane that he still teaches.”

Akira shrugged. “You know how he is.”

Miki giggled. “Yeah. In love with you.”

Akira’s face burned. “Shut up.”

Ryo had been teaching at a different university for the past three years, and he just refused to stop. Well, it wouldn’t have been an issue that he continued if he hadn’t entered a degree program. All that because he wanted to spend time with Akira.

At first, Akira did everything to convince him not to do that. He already had a PhD, what more did he want? When Ryo replied that he just wanted to spend more time with him, and that he didn’t care if it was weird, Akira saw that he couldn’t change his mind.

Although, Akira definitely understood now why Ryo had wanted this. In the past few years, they couldn’t meet as much due to their different schedules, but ever since the semester started, they met almost daily. It was obviously easier to go out for lunch if they both had an hour between classes, especially when Ryo attended roughly the same ones Akira did.

They were not in the same discipline, Ryo being a Japanese studies major, and Akira getting a teaching degree for Japanese and history. Miki opted for a teaching degree as well. She wanted to teach biology, but hadn’t decided on her second subject, so Akira peer pressured her into choosing Japanese. Some classes were required for both Japanese studies majors and Japanese teachers, so the three of them met pretty frequently.

The semester at the university Ryo taught at ended a week sooner than theirs, and now Ryo was overwhelmed by work. He had finals to grade and finals to study for, and the last day and a half he had been trying to do the two simultaneously, which ended in a disaster.

Miki hummed loudly, looking at the coffee table. “He kind of made a mess here.”

Akira got up and grabbed the first two mugs in his reach. “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

Miki grabbed his arm. “You don’t have to clean up instead of him.”

“No, I want to,” Akira said. “He is _my_ guest, after all.”

Miki didn’t argue. By the time Akira was finished with washing the dishes, Ryo came back. He sat next to Miki. Miki had one of his papers in her hands.

“Dude, are you for _real_? _This_ is what your exam looks like?”

Ryo grabbed the paper. “This is confidential. Give it to me.”

Miki tried to get it out of his reach.

“If you tear it, I’ll kill you,” Ryo warned.

“Then let go,” Miki replied with a shit-eating grin.

Ryo glared and did so.

Akira stood behind the couch and they haven’t noticed him. He snatched the paper out of Miki’s hands.

“Hey!”

Akira took a seat next to Ryo and read the paper. “Ryo-chan, you’re a sadist.”

“Hey, you’re the one who told me to switch from essay questions to multiple-choice ones.”

“I told you that so you wouldn’t overexert yourself.”

“I’m not overexerting myself by creating exam questions.”

“No,” Akira agreed, “but if you fail your students you’re going to have to write another exam, and correct those too, and it’s basically taking up just as much time as essay questions.”

Ryo sighed. “I’m not giving out an A without a reason.”

Miki, who had gotten hold of another exam in the meantime, laughed. “The literal first question here is ‘ _When was the Declaration of Independence signed_ ’?”

“Yeah? I teach American history?”

“I mean, yeah, but the answers are the following: a) 1776 January 2, b) 1776 February 2, c) 1776 March 2, and it continues like that until December.”

Akira punched Ryo in the shoulder. “That’s what you give an A for?”

Ryo rolled his eyes. “That’s exactly why I had essay questions! I won’t know if the student actually knows the correct answer or if they just guessed it.”

Akira shrugged. “Alright, alright. So, about grading them.”

Miki leaned forward. “You’re grading them too? I thought they were confidential.”

Ryo sighed. “Do you want to do it, too?”

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Miki said, “I love grading things.”

Ryo sorted through the infinite amount of papers stacked on the coffee table. He gave Akira and Miki about twenty each, put one already graded paper in front of them, and they got to work.

“Only write a tick if it’s correct,” Ryo instructed, “if it’s not, put an X and circle the correct answer. You don’t have to write anything more than that, I’ll do the rest.”

Akira made the discovery that Ryo was… kind of an asshole when it came to his exams, really. Half of the questions had twelve possible answers, from A to L. The other half of the questions were true or false questions, though, which redeemed him a bit.

Ryo finished grading his stack of exams much sooner, and then went on to finalize the ones graded by Akira and Miki. The whole thing only took them an hour or so.

“Thank you for your help,” Ryo said. He eyed the coffee table. “My laptop is somewhere under the textbooks.”

“No, it’s not,” Akira said, “it’s still in your laptop case.”

“Oh. Right.”

Ryo fetched his laptop and sat back.

“Hey, Ryo, you done studying for the morphology exam tomorrow?” Miki asked.

Ryo frowned at his laptop as it loaded. “Uh, yeah, almost. Why?”

“Because I don’t really understand some things,” Miki said, “and I was hoping that you could… you know, explain it to me.”

“Sure,” Ryo muttered, “I just need to write in the grades.”

Miki pointed at the stack. “Should I dictate it to you?”

“That would be great, yeah.”

Akira decided this was the perfect time for him to sit behind Ryo, wrap his arms around his waist, and put his head on his shoulder. “Can you explain it to me, too?”

Ryo put one hand atop Akira’s. “Honey, this isn’t too comfortable for me.”

Akira didn’t move. “Mm.”

Ryo sighed and accepted his destiny as a body pillow, turning his attention back to his laptop. “If I tell you a name, will you find me the exam?”

Miki hummed. “Wouldn’t it be easier if _I_ said the names?”

Ryo laughed. “That would be very logical, although that’s not how the software works.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“Nah, I’m not. I can’t individually give them their grades, I have to write it in in the order that the program tells me.”

“Awful,” Miki commented. “Who’s the first one?”

Akira closed his eyes and listened to them completing the boring task. Ryo smelled… _silky_. He was also very warm. Cuddling Ryo was quite the treatment.

\--

After Miki and Ryo were finished, they studied together for a few hours. Well, Ryo was mostly just explaining things. Akira thought that it was beneficial for him to do that, though – he seemed to have calmed down, and realized that the material wasn’t so hard, after all.

The exam was tomorrow, and Ryo and he were getting ready for bed.

Akira had pulled out the extra bed from under his. Akira made the bed for Ryo, Ryo brushed his teeth and changed into his pajamas.

Funny, Akira thought, that this was the third night Ryo spent here, but this was the first night he actually got into bed.

When the bed was made, Akira climbed into his and sat with his back leaned against the wall. He took the book from his nightstand and started reading it.

Ryo got in next to him a few minutes later. When he was settled, he folded his arms in front of his chest. “I didn’t know you read before going to bed.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t really _go_ to bed so you don’t see it,” Akira teased.

As a response, Ryo pushed himself up on his elbows, then leaned over and planted a kiss on Akira’s cheek. Then another on his jaw, then on his ear.

Akira giggled, and felt Ryo’s lips forming a smile in return.

Ryo pulled away, looking at Akira’s book. “What’s the story about?”

“I dunno yet, I started recently.”

Ryo grinned at him teasingly. “So you _don’t_ actually read before going to bed.”

Akira stuck out his tongue.

Ryo bumped his nose with a finger. “What’s the story been about until now?”

Akira turned the pages back to the start. “Uh, it has really long chapters, actually. So like, this is still the first one.”

“Mm.”

Ryo started wiggling, making himself comfortable. He laid his head on Akira’s stomach. Akira changed form holding his book with both hands to only holding it with one so he could stroke Ryo’s head with the other.

“What genre is it?” Ryo asked.

“Crime fiction,” Akira said. “Kind of. It’s about a teacher whose daughter gets murdered by two of her students, and I think she’s about to avenge her.”

“Hm.”

“She’s currently giving a speech to her class,” Akira explains further, although he knows that doesn’t really tell Ryo anything.

Ryo is uncharacteristically quiet for a few seconds. “Akira.”

“Yeah?”

“Will you read aloud to me?”

Akira stopped stroking his hair for a moment. “Really?”

Ryo nodded. “Yeah. I’m really tired, but I… I just figured…you know.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, uh, sure.” Akira’s face and neck were really hot. “Though, I don’t really read aloud.”

Ryo laughed. “That’s okay. I like hearing your voice.”

The heat in Akira’s face exploded. He couldn’t bring himself to answer, instead wallowed in the pleasant feeling Ryo’s words brought to him.

He continued to stroke Ryo’s hair to cover up his embarrassment, but Ryo caught on. He raised his head and turned to him.

A toothy grin appeared on his face. “You’re blushing.”

“Am not!”

Ryo laughed, fondly. He even had the nerve to lean in and kiss Akira’s nose, which did nothing but stoke the fire.

Ryo pulled away, just barely, watching him with a stupid, love-struck expression.

Akira looked back with the same stupid, love-struck expression.

“Okay, fine,” Akira said quietly, as if he didn’t want to do this. “Lie down and I’ll read to you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I only have 3 finals this semester and I've never felt so blessed before. I finally have the time to write fanfic again! :D
> 
> also, the book Akira reads is a real one, it's Confessions by Kanae Minato. I couldn't quote it because I only have a copy in German lmao, but I really liked that book.
> 
> kudos & comments really appreciated!! I especially love short comments :)


End file.
